Friday, February 27, 2015

I ran out of a scrapbooking item and Michael's and Hobby Lobby no longer carry it. I looked on Ebay, wondering if I could still buy it. Yes I can. And for a very large fee! I usually bought it locally, with a coupon, so spending $25 on something I normally would pay about $8 for is not in my price range. (When Creative Memories went out of business and the local scrapbooking company closed, it was a shock to us scrapbookers!)

So, I became resourceful. I have older types of the same product, that were too big. Easy. I cut about an inch off and it fit perfectly!
(For the scrapbookers out there, I'm talking about 12x12 page protectors. Its hard to find original 12x12 protectors for strap hinge pages!)
I have a stash of these older pages, purchased from thrift stores. Now I have a way to get page protectors! Yay!

Thursday, February 26, 2015

I've been reading the blog Living Well Spending Less for a while now. I really enjoy the Thrifty Thursday blog hops. I bought her book at Barnes and Noble with a much appreciated gift card.

My thoughts? It's really good! There is so much information in there, that I already put into practice. But, for a new couponer/frugal life convert, it would prove invaluable!
I enjoyed her personal stories and how vulnerable she was in telling them. That takes guts!

I signed up for her daily videos, meant to accompany the chapters. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was basically a repeat of the book. So, I would recommend either watching the short videos, or reading the book. Both may be over kill if you've been at this a while. (I've been living a frugal life for 20 years, starting with Tightwad Gazette)

This is the link to her site, telling you about the book. I highly recommend it to novice and pros alike! It was a great read and I couldn't put it down! While you're there, take a look around. She has a lot of great information to share.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

It is the day of a major snow fall, not the best time to pick to do my weekly grocery shopping! ☺

Otherwise, It was a pretty sucessful trip, just a bit crowded.

I brought home $225.00 worth of groceries and spent $90.12!!! After the store loyalty card savings and ecoupons, the total came to $155.12. After paper coupons and rebate checks, I spent $90.12! Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Here are a few of the bigger deals that I scored:

*Yakisoba on sale for $0.69, used a $1.00 off coupon and spent $0.36 each. (normally $1.19)

Thursday, January 8, 2015

I like to track how much I save, when I use coupons. I count the savings from digital coupons and paper coupons. The digital coupons are ones that I use from my smart phone or ones that I load to my grocery loyalty card. So basically, if I clipped it or loaded it, it gets counted. These savings totals include not only grocery coupons, but also restaurant, automotive, movie theater, thrift stores etc.

Here are my last 5 years' totals:

2010- 1,053.92

2011- 1,656.51

2012- 1,468.99

2013- 1,865.28

2014- 2,366.29

2012 wasn't my best year, but excluding 2012 I increase the amount year by year. It becomes my personal challenge, to save even more this year compared to last.

So for spending about 30 minutes every week this past year clipping coupons, I earned about $45 weekly average in savings. I count that a success!